Hannah Burdette, “Speculative Uncommons: Worldbuilding Stories across Abiayala (the Americas)”
Friday, February 7th
12:00 PM, Humanities Center, PAC 113
This talk will provide an overview of my current book project, which considers how and why authors from different backgrounds throughout Abiayala (the Americas) draw on Indigenous stories to imagine worlds otherwise. Through the lens of what I call speculative uncommons, my analysis emphasizes connections and tensions among works by Native and settler authors across the continent. I argue that Indigenous futurisms productively question the inevitability of history and pose the possibility to engage in reciprocal, decolonial modes of worldbuilding based on embodied stories of survivance and more-than-human relations.
Emily Jenkins-Moses, “Empathetic Discourses: Storytelling, Rhetoric, and Representation in Children's Museums”
Friday, March 7th
12:00 PM, Humanities Center, PAC 113
This talk focuses on empathy at children’s museums. Building on previous research that examined the impact of exhibition storytelling, multivocality, and cultural representation, this current project asks how rhetorical strategies are used in children’s museums to foster empathy and how exhibit layouts and designs influence empathetic discourses.
Emily Jenkins-Moses is an alumna of Chico State’s Anthropology master’s program and a lecturer in the department. Her research focuses on museums, childhood experiences, community representation, and empathy.
Nathaniel Heggins Bryant, “Queering the Birdman of Alcatraz”
Friday, April 18th
12:00 PM, Humanities Center, PAC 113
Based on ongoing archival research for his current book project tentatively entitled The Birdman of Leavenworth, Dr. Nathaniel Heggins Bryant will present some parts of a chapter on the gender and sexual politics of Robert F. Stroud, better (and erroneously) known as the Birdman of Alcatraz. During a decades-long period of incarceration spanning from the Progressive era to the height of the Cold War--an era marked by compulsory heterosexuality, heteronormativity, and both the pathologizing and criminalization of queerness--Stroud's open homosexuality was the second most-cited reason for continuing to imprison him, and this presentation will look at the ways both Stroud and his keepers discussed his queerness. Time permitting, he will also discuss very briefly some of the more interesting and surprising archival materials related to Stroud that he has come across so far.
